


Ghosts in your Sound

by KarkatHorns



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Eventual Shklance, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, I'm suffering and I'm taking you all down with me, M/M, Mild Gore, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, Platonic Lance and Hunk, Slow Burn, This gets super gay later idk, graphic description of burns, they/them pronouns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2018-09-22 04:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9583331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarkatHorns/pseuds/KarkatHorns
Summary: Lance gets injured while on a reconnaissance mission, and It's not exactly what he expected when he heard people say that "your life flashes before your eyes." It's hard, trying to save the world when you are constantly underestimated by the people you are trying to protect. It was an easy enough mission in theory: The Voltron team was going to explore the ruins of a few Galra Battle Sites that have been empty for the past decade. Pidge was going to assemble a lot of their technology into a database, trying to see what they’re using as weapons or healing materials. Lance would stand as lookout while Hunk scavenged for parts.[Season 2 Canon Divergent]





	1. Down at the Wayside

**Author's Note:**

> I know I should have made this chapter longer, but it's 3:05 am and I want to sleep.

It was an easy enough mission in theory. The Voltron team was going to explore the ruins of a Galra Battle Site, where rebels fought against the Galra in the past decade. It was just a few wasteland planets, and they were going to scout for traces of survivors, traces of rebel technology, and hopefully some torn apart Galra ships. Pidge was going to assemble a lot of their technology into a database, trying to see what they’re using as weapons or healing materials. Pidge was with Shiro and Keith as Team #1 to analyze technology left behind on three of the abandoned planets. Pidge and Shiro would be scouting for parts, while Keith would be the lookout. For Team A, (Lance didn’t want to be called Team #2 and he fought with Keith over it until Shiro gave in) Lance would stand as lookout while Hunk scavenged for parts. It's times like these where Lance is glad he isn’t an inventor, like Pidge. It's a lot of work and cataloging, and he would rather just explore these strange new planets. While Pidge’s tech knowledge came in the form of creating new things, Hunk was much better at tearing things apart. Lance knew well that the second they make it back that Hunk will be dissecting machines until he understands them well enough to replicate them himself. Pidge would likely look into the way data is stored across the parts, as well as any security on the damaged machines. On the other hand, Hunk is pretty good at completing complicated systems repairs. Probably because he's so nosy, and he wants to know absolutely everything about the world around him.

Lance was getting really exhausted with this desert planet. Apparently this place, much like Altea, rained flaming hot rocks. Coran had been extremely nostalgic about it, explaining why the planet scientifically needed to rain shrapnel. He also went into detail over the radio about his memories of dodging them as a kid, and everybody on the team had stopped briefly to listen. According to Coran, it was common to play with the rock shards after the ‘rain’ had cleared up, making little stacks of rocks along an edge of water for the waves to take them away. The story ended when Allura gently reminded him to stop distracting the Paladins, as they were on a mission. Lance personally found himself enjoying the stories from the mustached old man, though it did make him briefly homesick. He missed _regular_ rain; the type that landed on your skin on a warm day with the sun on your face and a gentle breeze running through your hair. Hunk noticed that Lance was a little out of it and interrupted his thought process with a “You okay there Lance?”, his hands going over a strange mental plate he managed to find on the desert floor. Lance's eyes move quickly to the buried metal parts all over the sand. 

“I’m doing just fine. My mind hasn’t _deserted_ me yet,” Lance jokes, a sly grin on his face. Hunk huffs, feeling like he should have expected the pun, and relaxing at Lance's casual demeanor. The sand shuffles beneath them as they move about, and Lance definitely didn't want to get any sand in his suit. Even though the altean technology could wash it out just find, he still felt as if it would be stuck there forever. Sand had a habit of sticking to anything and everything available, and Lance didn't want to test the limits of the automated laundry system. Because of this, he keeps his visor all the way down, which also helps prevent sand from getting in his mouth. 

Lance is cut out of his idle thoughts when Hunk speaks up again. “Alright, well I’m getting some pretty strange readings from this panel. Well, not actual readings, but, you know what I mean. The alpha configuration device looks like it’s been overloaded, but the photon sphere buried far under this thing is probably still intact,” Hunk rambles. Lance is just about ready to say the words ‘English, por favor,’ when Pidge breaks in and immediately replies. “Using a photon sphere for analyzation? What would they need to analyze that requires breaking light down into so many fractions? It certainly wouldn’t be-“ and suddenly, Lance zones out. Okay, nerd talk. Guess nobody cares about his little jokes then.

Lance moves over to the uncovered panel, noting that the Panel wasn’t the only thing below the sand. He uses his hands to dig into the sand next to the metal plate, noting that it was connected to something large and round. A ship? Was there an entire ship, buried underneath the sand? Most of the stuff they were scavenging was destroyed on purpose by the Galra. When a smaller or weaker fleet fails a mission, the Galra military will send out scouts to destroy any big things that they may have left behind. According to the files they managed to get, even if there are Galra soldier survivors from a mission, they still don’t hesitate to destroy their own ships if the soldiers remaining or injured or are few in terms of numbers. Ships where at least a fourth of the crew don’t survive often get regarded as failures. After all, it's seen as more respectable to die fighting for the empire than it is to survive a situation where a handful of soldiers made it without their own commander. It was the Galra way of weeding out the weak from their own numbers. If soldiers survive with more than one missing limb, or if they are sick or close to dying on their own, spending resources to help those wounded soldiers would take away from the resources being used for the war. There are exceptions, of course. Elite fleets weren’t given the same treatment as everyday fleets, and the soldiers on those fleets were to be rescued for their loyalty and superior abilities. Everyday ships that ‘failed’ their mission and have a small number of survivors are cheaper and easier to destroy than repair, while destroyed Elite Ships imply that the soldiers will find their way back to the nearest base in the event that something goes wrong. Any remaining ships, unless too expensive, are still destroyed after a small period of time in order to stop space bandits and pirates from stealing their technology or going through their information. However, it wouldn't be surprising if the Galra missed destroying one of their many fallen, regular ships. The ship was buried so far under the ground that it would have been hard to find without scouting the desert for a few days on foot. This planet had natural electromagnetic properties that tended to destroy scouting equipment, which is why the Voltron team was scouting on foot and using technology that couldn't be damaged too badly by magnets. It's been five days of scouting so far, and the days on all three planets were maybe twice as long as the days on Earth. When the Galra fail to recover a lost ship, they either disregard it as being lost in combat, or destroy the planet to prevent the leaking of more information. However, they can't destroy every planet with a lost ship might be, because there's a point where the time and energy going into the destruction becomes a drain on resources, too. It’s not like the scouts would search through an entire desert, digging into every last inch in order to find a single scouting ship that was lost in battle, when there was more important things in the universe to be on the lookout for. The paladins knew this all from the logs Pidge was able to decrypt off of an old Galra storage drive they found previously.

Lance looks around his surroundings, keeping a drowsy eye on Hunk. He was wide awake this morning, but it's boring doing the same thing all day. Yesterday they had wandered around the desert for hours while Allura helped scan the desert using something from inside of the castle. They got a whole lot of false positives over the past few days, with Lance's favorite being a tiny spring on the inside of a cave made of some sort of metallic mineral. It was a nice break from the suffocating sand, and the heat was so intense that Lance didn't feel like doing much of anything anymore. Anyhow, in the present, Hunk was blabbing to Pidge and the two of them were getting more and more excited by the alien technology they found. Pidge was the obvious happier of the two, their voice raised as they went on and on about some guns they found trapped under layers of ice on another planet. They were chattering to Hunk excitedly, asking him for the specs on the ship that they found. Hunk's words were lost on Lance, who wasn't interested in Hunk describing "the strange round coils inside of a sphere on the inside of the first panel." At least their teams have both found stuff, though. The desert is boring and plain, with a light wind carrying off sand in the distance. Saying it was hot was an understatement. Lance could probably actually drown in his own sweat, practically baking alive in his suit. Okay, maybe he was exaggerating, but it was at least 112 degrees Earth Fahrenheit. The suits had a lot of circulation, but Lance still felt a bit suffocated. He missed the rain more than anything now.

“Hey Pidge, I think the generator still has power? I’m going to try and see if I can use it to make the cylindrical hub start working again,” Hunk says. Lance carefully attempts to process what he just heard. Wait, the ship still has power? It’s been over a decade, and Allura said so herself. Pidge and Hunk are really focused on the technology, when Lance realizes that they aren’t being careful. He stands up quickly when Hunk reaches in, pulling up a strange cylinder with a handle before twisting it and pushing it back down.  
It all happens in a flash, as cliché as that sounds. Lance dives in and with a bizarre strength, he shoves Hunk out of the way, moving in front of the Larger paladin. The cylinder sparks with a burst of light, and suddenly Lance’s right side is left feeling really numb. There’s a sharp, burning sensation and a horrible smell, and then Lance looks down to see the sand eating up the color red.

It’s weird, how slow something so fast can go. Lance, for a second, is hypnotized by the sand. It’s like watering a really dehydrated plant. It eats up the moisture so fast that it’s like it was never even wet. It smells like charred hamburger meat, out of all things. Like something that was once freshly grilled but left on a stove for too long, turning to a charred mess of black chalk. The sand draws him in, as if it’s pulling him towards the ground. It’s spinning wildly, and he can hear a familiar voice reaching out for him.  
“It’s-- …ance….Please! wake-“ something chokes, but his right ear is ringing and he can barely hear from his left. It wasn’t ringing like it does in the movies, with the high-pitched squeal that sounds like a dog whistle. It feels like his ear is ringing physically, as if somebody were shaking the inside of his eardrum so violently that it moved inside of his skull. It hurt, but so did everything else. There was so much going on at one time, and then suddenly, nothing at all.

\---

The weird thing about being in flight school was that flying wasn’t the only thing that people did. It was a military program, run of course by the United States Government. To apply, you needed to fill out a really long application filled with many questions regarding everything in your past. The Garrison wasn’t the most advanced military school out there, but it was still an amazing program. Applicants had to be 16 years or older, but they needed to have a parent’s permission to join unless they were 18 years of age. In high school, you could talk to a recruiter and apply early, to make sure you have a seat saved for you. It’s a promise that you are selling your life to the military, in order for a chance to touch the stars one day. The Garrison also required you to take part in a lot of physical exercises. Cadets, before being accepted, needed to be timed for a 5 mile run. They also needed to go through an aerobics track, and do specific exercises while being graded by a high-ranking officer. It was one of the most nerve-wracking things that Lance ever did.

Lance’s family didn’t have a lot of money. They weren’t rich, but they weren’t poor, either. While serving in the Garrison, boot camp happens over the course of 6 months. In that time, Lance didn’t have any contact at all with his family unless it was a Sunday, at exactly 7:00am, for one hour. It was tiring, but it wasn’t exactly the same as a real military bootcamp. Sure, they did drills, and they needed to wake up early every morning, but it wasn’t as strict. Haircuts weren’t as regulated, though a higher-up would probably kill you if they saw lint on your uniform. It was hard, but Lance did it with his family in mind.

During your time at the Garrison, you aren’t allowed to get a job for your first two years. They pay you monthly just for being a cadet, with your training being your equivalent of a job. Lance was allowed to send money to his family, while also being allowed to buy things for himself. It was the first time he really felt free, though he did jeopardize it a few times sneaking out with his roommate. In fact, Lance was really surprised to see that Hunk had passed through boot camp in general. The boot camp was rigorous and difficult, and he didn’t think somebody as big as Hunk could make it. He was wrong to judge, of course. Most of Hunk’s size is made up of bone and muscle, as incredibly soft as he may be. Lance was really glad to have made a friend so quickly in the training program, though he only met Hunk when they were being assigned roommates at the end of Basic Training.

The actual cadet program was a piece of cake in comparison. They had scheduled classes, training, and meal times. Hunk had missed home, but he missed his family’s home-cooked meals more than anything. They were ranked in their classes per their abilities and skills. Lance had worked really hard, but he wasn’t able to get a pilot position. He hadn’t gotten enough points on the technical tests that were needed to become a pilot, and he kept crashing the virtual simulator. Both crashing the plane in the program, as well as crashing the program running it. What could he say? He was always pretty unlucky in terms of software.  
His rival was a kid named Keith. He could recognize that Mullet anywhere. He was the best pilot of his graduating class, and he acted as if it wasn’t much of anything. It made Lance’s blood boil just to look at him. He didn’t socialize well with others, but he was a damn good pilot. Lance had been studying in his room, working hard to try and obtain a position that came so naturally to somebody else, and that person just always seemed to take it for granted. He didn’t have friends, and he didn’t seem to talk to anybody at all. Lance had a family back home that he wanted to come back to, proud of what he’s done and the steps that he’s made. Of course he would be mad at a person who only ever seemed to be closed-off, angry, and selfish.

When Keith dropped out, it was like a whole new world had opened up in front of his very own eyes. He begged to be retested to become a pilot, and when he was, he made the position. He remembers the call to his family, his mother and abuelita eating up his time for a phone call while his siblings, little and big, cheered for him in the background. It just felt as if something right happened in the world, for the first time in a very long time.

Then, out of the blue, he saved a man who was tortured by a cruel alien race with the person he hated the most in the world. He met a robotic blue lion under the Earth, and from there met the princess of an extinct race. His entire world had changed right before his eyes, dramatically unfolding itself into infinite little pieces while he reached out helplessly and tried to grab them all. It was slipping through his fingers, choking him, making it hard to breathe.

His life was flashing before his very eyes. It was suffocating and beautiful, and although he could feel his mind drifting off into one of those tiny infinite particles in space, he had never felt so peaceful in his life. He could just lay there in the void for eternity, feeling the world as it slipped through his fingertips and suffocated his lungs.

\---

It was a mess, really. Hunk didn’t realize that the panel he opened was attached to such a large ship. He had assumed it was a reconnaissance vehicle due to the parts he saw, and how it was constructed. The circuit he was playing with had overloaded, and in short, it had almost blown up in his face. Lance moved quicker than his thoughts did, that’s for sure. The blue paladin had swept in front of him, his right side being torn up in the impact. He didn’t lose any limbs or anything, but he probably burned though some of his organs. Hunk caught him, his own arm pretty torn up from the blast. Some shrapnel had flown off into his shoulder, a piece of metal lodging its way in his cheek. He started running with Lance, off in the direction of his lion.

“Lance! Stay with me buddy, please wake up,” he repeated, the other Paladins springing into action. Blue was the first lion that Hunk saw, moving herself over and dipping her head. Yellow was soon to follow, allowing for Hunk to carry his injured friend inside. On the way to the castle, the smell hit him and he threw up all of his stomach contents onto the floor of his Lion’s head.

Lance looked strangely peaceful sleeping in the healing chamber, Keith notes with a soft sigh. The containment chambers are usually full of air, versus the liquid tanks that you would see in alien movies. It accelerates the body’s normal healing process, instead of building up anything synthetic. Keith, truthfully, has no real idea how it works or functions. Pidge could give him a technical answer, Hunk would know why it works, and Coran would explain it for half an hour or more, so it’s not like he is planning to ask anytime soon.

 

Hunk had carried Lance inside and ran to the Cryptopods without even saying a word to the other Paladins. He didn’t have any time to, really. Coran already had the pod ready. Allura was strong, but startled. There was a numbness to the pain in her eyes, as if she had seen too much blood in her lifetime. Hunk had been quite hysterical, seeing the entire thing unfold before his eyes. Keith tried his best to understand Hunk’s pain, but felt frustrated. The second that Lance was lifted into Coran’s arms and placed in the pod was the second that he finally started crying.

 

Keith… hasn’t seen anybody cry like that before. It was hard. Hunk was injured too, but the second that Shiro and Pidge made it to the scene, he refused to be helped.

 

“Just leave me be, we need to make sure that the pod can handle the injuries that Lance got. I’d rather spend my time making sure my friend is okay than wasting my time taking out a few metal splinters,” Hunk blurts, frustrated and wiping at his eyes. He looked hurt with his eyebrows knitted together, his face contorted and his nose running. Shiro’s face softened from his hard glare at the full sight of Lance in the pod, the machine still focusing on stopping the blood flow. His expression was soft, understanding, and yet stern.

 

“Hunk. I’m sorry for what you just saw, but Lance is going to be okay. You did all that you could. Now we just need to wait for the castle to heal them the best that it can,” Shiro states, moving closer to Hunk. Keith wasn’t sure what to do, he was just frozen in place. A part of him wanted to yell at Hunk for Lance’s situation. He doesn’t know what happened, but he needed… something to put the blame on. Hunk was the only other person there, but he knew that Hunk would never want to put a teammate in danger. Somehow his need to place the blame on something left him dazed and confused, speechless and exhausted. He should have done something. If he went with Lance and Hunk instead of Shiro and Pidge, maybe he could have done something. Maybe, he would be the one hurt instead of Lance.

 

Pidge is the one to interrupt his thoughts, running forwards and giving Hunk a big hug. They’re tiny in comparison to his large size, his arms quickly wrapping around them while he sniffs. Shiro wordlessly wraps his arms around them both. His family. The people he is sworn to protect, no matter what the cost. Coran gently places a hand on Keith’s shoulder, his other hand on Hunk’s shoulder. After a moment, he goes over to where Allura had turned away. He gently wraps an arm around her shoulder, and she looks mournfully at the ground.

 

Keith feels helpless and lost. Pidge gently reaches out to him, pulling him into the long hug as well. He’s thankful for the small cue as of what to do. He doesn’t know what to say, even. It’s quiet and wordless, but the comfort of the team makes him feel as if things might, for a moment, be okay.

 

\---

 

The hug lasted for a little while. They all stood together until Hunk finally stopped sobbing as much as he was. Coran had dropped by after a few minutes with a wet towel for Hunk to wipe his face off with. Coran looked over his wounds briefly, and then looked over at Shiro, as if having a silent conversation. Shiro averted his eyes and gently releases Hunk, giving Pidge’s hair a gentle ruffle. Keith lets go the second he sees Shiro let go, mirroring his movements. He isn’t so good with social situations, especially in one like this where a teammate has gotten hurt.

 

“Hunk, you should probably get into one of the pods,” Shiro suggests. His voice is soft and warm, like milk and honey. He isn’t putting any pressure on Hunk, just assuring him that it would be better if he could fix up his wounds. There’s still metal sticking out of his arm, with the one shard visibly embedded in his cheek. There’s some blood on Pidge’s helmet and shoulder, with some that dripped down on Shiro as well. There’s a few drops on Keith’s helmet too, but nothing too big. Hunk looks over at the three of them, hesitantly, but gives them all a nod. He seems to have calmed down from before, though still quite upset. Coran blocks the way from him looking over at Lance, gently guiding him over to a pod and giving him a compression vest to wear while inside. Pidge leaves, and Shiro gives him a reassuring nod before leaving with Keith at his tail.

 

Allura’s voice comes in through their helmets, which none of them have taken off just yet. Her voice wavers a little at first, but remains strong and firm. She is a good leader. “Paladins, please make your way over to the decontamination room. You all went back into the castle without decontaminating first, and you were all around foreign plant and animal life.” Shiro walks in front of the group, and they all wordlessly follow him to the decontamination room. It’s not really the same without the whole group there.

 

\---

 

Pidge is at a loss for words. They discovered a lot of information from the small parts that they managed to recover. In fact, they found a lot of old Galra medical records. While the records are old and most of the soldiers gone, there was stuff about at least 5 commanders and their main fleets. Pidge didn’t get a chance to read them yet, as they were so busy analyzing some old gun prototypes that they just didn’t have the time.

 

After Hunk announced that the accelerator he was studying had power, Pidge was excited to hear what kind of things he would find. Shiro and Keith had been talking about The Garrison, making idle conversation about the application process. They didn’t have their helmets on, not wanting to interrupt the technology conversation. Suddenly, it was like a speaker blew out. It made a loud, deafening noise into both of Pidge’s ears, and the other two heard it coming from their headphones. Pidge had ripped off their helmet, trying to recover, while Keith and Shiro put their own helmets on. Hunk could be heard screaming Lance’s name, with the sound of something akin to gunfire coming out from the other end. They immediately sprang to action, getting into their lions and flying over to Hunk’s location. Hunk wasn’t able to answer them, likely because his helmet had been damaged during the blast. It was minor damage, considering that their armor was military grade, but Hunk had been really close to the blast that it didn’t matter. He didn’t talk to them at all, leaving them to understand that the blue lion wasn’t with him.

 

It was only when they entered the base that Pidge could get a grasp on the situation. Hunk had ran with Lance in his arms, preventing them from seeing the body. The smell had been horrible, though. It just smelt like burnt wood, really. They didn’t see Lance’s injuries until Coran put him into the pod, but what little they saw made them run to give Hunk a hug the moment that they processed it.

 

And now, here they were. They changed back into their everyday clothes after the decontamination process. Hunk and Shiro changed as well in their own private rooms, and then met with Princess Allura and Coran in the front of the ship.

 

It was quiet at first, but Allura turned to face them with an understandable pain. There was a moment of silence, Allura looking at them all before beginning to speak. They felt like they were back in the Garrison again, standing at Attention. Heels pressed tightly together with a 45-degree angle opening, arms at their sides with their hands rolled as if they were holding a roll of quarters. Their thumbs resting against the seam of the side of their pants. Their shoulders squared and straight, awaiting an order. Shiro stood at something akin to a Parade Rest, without his arms behind his back. His arms were resting as his sides, but his feet were even and his shoulders squared. Keith was looking at the floor for a bit, hands clenched into fists. He looked frustrated, while Pidge and Shiro just looked concerned. Allura has an unreadable expression now, her eyes no longer locking with the Paladins.

 

“Please rest, you three. You gathered a lot of information today, and you learned a lot about the Galra. We have a lot of information, as well as even more new questions. You are free to do whatever you would like until we have Dinner together at the usual time. You can rest, train, or go to the pool. I will be here with Coran going over our next mission plan, but if you need to talk to us, that is fine as well,” she states. She turns, as if to motion that the paladins were dismissed.

 

“I’m going to train,” Keith says, his voice stern and expressionless. He walks off into the distance, with Shiro’s eyes following him.

 

Pidge could go over some of the data, but they really wanted nothing to do with it right now. Instead, they would rather start up the Altean Language program and boot it into Safe Mode. They don’t want to fight anything, just do something unrelated to the Galra while feeling like they’re learning something important.

 

“I’m going to keep watch over Lance and Hunk. Hunk will get out sooner, so he will probably want a debrief when he gets out,” Shiro states. He knows that Hunk will probably get out much later than Dinner, but he just wanted to be alone. He doesn’t leave yet, though, looking over at Pidge to see their answer.

 

“I’m going to study Altean,” they state, simply. Shiro nods and walks off, and Pidge looks back at Coran and Allura before leaving the room.

                ---

Keith spent his time punching into The Guardian as much as possible. He just needed something to take his anger out on. He was frustrated, and rightfully so, unable to help one of his teammates. Sweat was dripping down his forehead, and his arms and legs burned from the constant swinging of his weapon. It had been hours of continuous moving around, bending himself away from flicks of The Guardian’s sword and curling himself in so that he could swipe at it with his Bayard. His arms and legs felt like they were on fire. He was breathing hard, a little overheated but still wanting to fight. His movements went from fast and hard, fueled by anger and frustration, to slow and exhausted. The frustration was eaten away by the aching of his limbs. Still, despite how tired he was, he just felt like he had to do something. As if his mind wouldn’t stop racing, pushing his heart into his lungs for long enough to give him a small boost of energy to move forwards on. He let out a breath of frustration when The Guardian finally managed to push him down, falling on his side. It took him a good moment or two to stand back up, launching his body at it until he pushed it’s head against the wall with the edge of his sword.

 

“Stop,” was the only word to come out of his mouth for those hours. The Guardian powered down, and Keith immediately collapsed on his knees, panting. His shoulders ached, and he rolled them back until he heard a satisfying crack along the edge of his spine.

 

Venting through combat was satisfying, as much as it was tiring. Keith eventually stood up, making his way over to the showers. He wasn’t wearing his armor, just his usual black jeans and dark gray shirt. He had taken off his jacket before starting, leaving it on the floor of the Training room. He picks it up on the way to the strange, alien locker room, before throwing all of his clothes into a laundry disposal chute. He walks into the shower and turns the water up to an insanely hot temperature. At home, he would turn it up as much as he possibly could. Here, though, it probably could get so hot that it could cook him alive. He preferred to not have 3rd Degree Burns from a shower, though he still made the water hot enough to sting his skin a bit. He scrubbed at his face, moving to his neck before getting to his shoulders. He rubbed himself down with this weird black bar of soap, though he did like the way that it smelled. The only way he could describe it would be if a person imagined what a meadow on a volcano would smell like. Not the burning ash or soot, but the smell of heat radiating from the ground merging with the soft smell of something like a meadow. It was nice, really.

 

After staying in the shower for way longer than actually needed, Keith finally got dressed again. His clothes had been washed by the laundry program, and had been neatly folded and placed into a bin outside of the showers in the locker room. He really likes the convenience of alien laundry technology, it had been irritating to clean his clothes every week while he was stuck in the desert. He slipped his newly clean clothes onto his skin, putting his favorite jacket on top of his usual outfit.

 

 Just as he was leaving the training room, Shiro entered through the door. He seemed tense at first, but tried to force himself to relax when he noted that Keith was right in front of him. “Keith,” he starts, getting his bearing. “Dinner is about to start soon,” he states. His voice careful.

“Yeah, I was just about to head down,” Keith states. He adjusts his jacket a little bit, so that it rests tighter over his shoulders.

Shiro looks as if he is about to say something, but then presses his mouth into a tight line. Keith looks over at him, staring at the scar on his nose. You don’t really need to look somebody in the eyes to make them think that you’re staring right at them. That’s something Keith learned when he was really little. Shiro breaks the ‘eye contact’ and nods, before leaving down the hallway. Keith quietly follows behind him. Shiro isn’t normally this quiet, but it made sense given the circumstances. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

\---

 

Hunk gets out of the Healing Chamber at 5:30am. Considering he was put in around 7:49 the previous night, he had been in there for a pretty long time. He feels exhausted when he leaves the chamber, as expected as that is. He tries to take a step but almost falls, because of the hard objects at the bottom of his pod.

 

Looking down into a used healing pod is one of the worst things a person could do. Looking down was a mess of blood and probably damaged tissue, a disgusting pile of damaged skin. Among the mess are shards of metal, black and porous. It has no resemblance to the machine that it used to be. Hunk feels nauseous again, but bites it back. He needs water, and he definitely needs to drink something. Stepping out of the chamber, he notes that his feet are surprisingly clean, despite the ring of mess around him. He turns to the healing pod, closing it behind him and setting it on cleaning mode. He feels okay, but understandably dizzy and tired. He’s hungry and thirsty, that’s for sure. The machine automatically starts giving you an IV when you enter, but it’s so subtle and it’s gone at least 30 minutes before you wake up. His arms both hurt, one now covered in patches of lighter, new skin. Hunk looks around at his surroundings and sees that Shiro had fallen asleep on the sofa. There were some books next to him that looked like they belonged to Pidge, with writing in Altean. Pidge was nowhere to be seen though, so they must have stayed a while before leaving to go to bed. Shiro was covered in a standard blanket that Coran probably threw on him at some point during the night.

 

Hunk moves over to Lance’s pod, looking inside. He was looking a lot better, that’s for sure. There was still a gaping hole in his side, the machine whirring as it calculates the best course of action of what parts of him to accelerate healing for. It looks like he lost his whole liver to the bomb. Maybe part of his stomach. Hunk winces and looks up at Lance’s face, trying not to think about it. Lance was going to be okay. Futuristic alien technology works better than any doctor could back on Earth. He’s home, and nothing is going to go after him now that he’s safe.

 

Hunk rests a big palm on the glass, relaxing his tense shoulders. “You’re going to be okay, buddy. I promise that when you get out of this thing that I’ll listen to you sing the entirety of Gasolina,” Hunk jokes, his voice soft and hurt. His best friend got hurt in front of him, just because he was cautious enough to piece together a potentially unsafe situation during a time when there weren’t that many warning signs. Nothing too obvious, anyways. Hunk frowns, taking his hands off the glass and going into the kitchen to get something to eat. He’s starving, and he has never wanted water so badly in his whole life.

 


	2. Water Level

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to pretend things are okay when somebody is missing from the Dinner table. People like to blame themselves for things completely out of their control. As if they can control fate, or control situations that they never could have seen beforehand. After bad things happen, people want to think there was something they could have done. Anything. As if they could have seen into the future. Lance is in critical condition, but the Paladins are getting some time to reflect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been busy with school but I haven't given you guys an update on this, so I'm posting what I have... Sorry about that! I didn't want to leave you all hanging for so long,, As always, there is a HUGE gore warning for this chapter. It was going to be way longer, but I have classes and it's been taking too long to write.

At about 11:30am, Earth Eastern Standard Time, Hunk woke up from his bed, sitting up and rubbing at his eyes. He moves over to the healing pod, sitting down in front of it and gently placing a hand on the glass.

Lance is wearing the usual Healing Pod Suit now, but he wasn’t doing so earlier. When people are injured, they need to be changed into the suit because of how the pod operates. The suit sends signals to the pod, so that it knows where to place something like an IV, and it can gently apply pressure to the skin. The biggest thing about it was that it actually had small wires running throughout the inside, relaying important vitals. There were tubes alongside the wires that connected to the back of the pod, sending air across the body in order to help with circulation. Lance was so bad that Coran put a special vest on him, over the damaged underarmor he was already in. Coran took off the white, strong metal plates from his body, but the underarmor would have to wait. Lance was losing too much blood to be moved into another set of clothes. The vest was long-sleeved, and had a multitude of zippers. Hunk was in a bit of shock when Lance was put in, so he honestly can barely remember the way Coran quickly threw the jacket on the paladin.

The healing pod wasn’t meant to regenerate lost body parts. If somebody loses an arm or a leg, the pod can only heal the body and reduce the scarring on a major level. A good engineer might even be able to make it so that they can attach delicate parts of a prosthetic to a person, allowing the body to heal around the prosthetic while it is slowly surgically added to the body. An extremely slow process like that would make it amazingly easier to install complicated prosthetics that allow for the simulation of nerve endings, feeling, grip, and added strength. It’s different from human prosthetics, which work with what they can with what remains of a limb. The machine can’t work miracles, and those were the gentle words that Princess Allura told him after he came out of the pods. Lance’s intestines had come out of his body. His actual stomach was burned, but the healing pod was able to recreate the lining of his stomach on one side. It would be almost good as new, though it was slightly smaller than it was before. Lance probably also won’t be able to eat solid foods for about two weeks after coming out of the pod.

                Lance’s bladder and intestines actually came out of his body during the explosion. His intestines were slightly twisted, a condition he was probably born with and never knew about. The machine fixed all of that, though he probably will have cramps in his abdomen for a little while until his body readjusts to regular food intake. His bladder was absolutely wrecked as an organ, barely a scrap of meat. The machine couldn’t replicate one, and so it started to go through a process where it tried to recreate an alien one from system memory. Pidge, Allura, and Coran talked over the specifics while Hunk was in the machine, and apparently found that while Altean bladders were in a slightly different location, they were practically identical to the human version. The Alteans also had some sort of extra filtration system in theirs, though, that was apparently useless unless somebody decided to eat flowers. Hunk didn’t want to think about it, really. That was just an organ that could be fixed.

                Lance had his appendix removed by the healing pod itself, which was almost funny. The healing pod detected it as an essentially useless organ, and the injury seemed to have irritated it, so the pod decided to throw it out with user input. Lance could live without it, but his liver was another story entirely.

                Hunk had no idea what they could possibly do to fix that. It’s not like Lance was missing a Kidney. He was missing his entire liver. The healing pod was working around it, filtering things out for his body while he recovered. The one thing they could definitely do was have an alien filtration system inside of his body. It would be like a super-liver, even. It would filter out everything a normal liver could, but it would be very efficient and they would need to be careful that it wouldn’t filter out things that a human body needs. There are a lot of vitamins that Altean bodies don’t care for, and other things that an Altean body would need but a Human body can’t have too much of. Also, if they made a device, it wouldn’t be able to function on its own. It wouldn’t be like Shiro’s arm; it would be a filtration system. It would need to have a removable component, so that the filter can be cleaned. They can’t use an alien organ, because Lance’s body will already struggle with the machine creating the Altean equivalent of a bladder using his own human blood, tissue, and cells. The Liver would be technological, but they would need to be careful. It would need to be able to withstand a hit during a fight, without rupturing or turning off. The filter will likely be able to last for a very, very long time thanks to alien medical prowess. However, they would need to be smart about it. A larger filter would need to be replaced through surgery, even if it needed to be replaced every 40 years, even. A smaller filter could potentially be wired out through an opening in Lance’s skin, with Lance being able to clean it out himself every year or two when needed.

                Alien technology was amazing, but even the amazing castle they currently live in is very outdated. There are other planets with more sophisticated forms of healing, because 10000 years is a very long time for people to catch up. There could be more medical knowledge for the Paladins to gain from anywhere in the universe, but there would never guarantee that the technology would specifically work for human beings. Lance has a lot of healing to do, even without worrying about getting him a new liver. He would be okay, though. His heartbeat isn’t irregular anymore, his lungs seem to be doing just fine, and he seems to be reacting well to the IV. Hunk can’t help but worry though, his anxiety getting the better of him. There are so many things that could potentially go wrong that it was hard to wrap his head around the idea that things might even be okay.

Hunk goes to get lunch with the Paladins, the sound of his own footsteps echoing down the long hallways of the ship. While normally he would like the long walks, looking at the alien lights running down the corridors and thinking about how they work, it just felt slightly patronizing now. He would be walking down to the kitchen on a normal day to get food and the sound of his steps would be a small comfort for him, but now it felt like the echoing of his own heartbeat in his ears. It was a small sound, but it was somehow still overwhelming in every way, and Hunk wasn’t exactly sure as to why. When he makes it to the dining room, nobody else has arrived yet, and Hunk wonders briefly if he should cook something. A part of him wanted to cook out of stress, but that would take all day and he wouldn’t want anybody to bother him while he focused on what he was doing. It was hard for him to work and deal with other things at the same time, oddly unable to multitask like that despite being able to seamlessly work on 20 engineering projects at once. Hunk finds himself looking through the cabinets and absentmindedly taking out various spices they’ve gotten as victory gifts from assorted planets, his hands moving before he could really process what it was he was going to make.

For the most part, Hunk zones out entirely. It’s as if nothing else really matters in his small little world of cooking, and the only thing that lets him know that he should stop is when he realizes that the assortment of food he’s making is more than any of the paladins can probably eat at one time. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he knew that the others would need to get in a good meal today so that they wouldn’t get stressed and go hungry. He moves to set the table before leaving the dining room and seeking out Coran or Allura, knowing that one of them could probably call in the others for their paladin lunch. It was still early, so maybe it could be more of a brunch instead? A part of Hunk felt a little bad, though. He made a lot of food, but even he somehow no longer felt hungry. His stomach just felt heavy with dread, even after knowing that Lance would be okay. The machine would work on him and would help him as much as possible, and he just needed to stop thinking about it.

Of course, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He just felt more and more anxious as he wandered through empty hallways. Thinking about the healing pods, and how they worked. Shiro had scars all over, but the Galra probably left them on purpose. Hunk couldn’t help but wonder if Lance would be left with any scars from the blast. If he did, he would probably make a big deal out of how his face was left untouched. He got scraped up a little, but it was nothing that would scar over. His torso had taken most of the hit. Because the pods are using alien technology to regenerate everything, Hunk wonders if he’ll even be left with any scars at all, or if the skin will grow back as neat and tidy as if Lance had never been hurt at all. That would be pretty freaky if Lance already had a childhood scar or birthmark that was now replaced with completely markless skin. Hunk felt like his brain was going to melt with how fast his thoughts were racing.

Coran isn’t in the engine room or any of the rooms filled with any sort of tech. Hunk finds Keith first, beating up the Gladiator in the training deck. He’s covered in layers of sweat and Hunk can smell the musk the second the door opens, but he doesn’t complain or try to joke around knowing very well how upset Keith was. He gently says that brunch is ready and moves back out, rubbing at his nose and moving along to find Allura whispering softly to her mice on the observation deck, though the deck had been empty when Hunk came back earlier in search of Coran. He gently clears his throat when he enters the room, and she quiets before turning around, the mice on her shoulders.

“Princess, uh, the food's ready. I made a lot of food and all, but I wasn’t able to find Pidge or Coran, so can you make an announcement or something for them?” Hunk requests, voice soft. She nods, pausing for a moment before speaking. “I’ll do that right away, Hunk,” she replies, voice soft. She looks like she’s lost in thought, and for a moment, opens her mouth as if to say something, before closing it. Hunk stands patiently for her, but when he sees that she doesn’t want to speak, he decides not to force her. Everybody has been having a rough time, and Hunk wanted to give her the freedom to decide whether or not she wanted to share her feelings about what happened today. There’s a silence hanging between them for a moment, before the mice squeak and Hunk forces himself to loosen up his shoulders.  

By the time everybody arrives for brunch the food is a bit cold, and Hunk soon discovers that there’s a device in the kitchen that heats up food by resting the bottoms of the plates on it. It’s so mixed in to the counter that there’s no indication that the counter is doing anything special, but Coran walks him through it and helps him reheat what they can. When they start to talk, Hunk begins voicing his concerns over Lance’s condition. Keith vocally blames himself, and Pidge tries to reassure him. Allura says that she was the one to send them into unfamiliar territory anyway, so if there was anybody to blame, it must be herself. Shiro says it’s nobody’s fault, and that they need to work together as a team to make sure they’re prepared for situations like these. The paladin armor is meant to take really hard hits, but nothing from a spaceship that close up. They couldn’t have known what would have happened, especially with the scanners not working efficiently on that planet in particular. Coran agrees with Shiro, trying to get everybody to eat and explaining that Lance is going to be okay. The healing pods will take a very long time to help him, but he rerouted more power to the med bay so that they could be sure that Lance would come out of critical condition soon enough. At least, he was stable, and that was a good sign.

\---

Naturally, after brunch, the Paladins want to see how Lance is doing.

Lance still isn’t in the best situation. There’s still a hole in his side, though Coran assures them that it’s sterile. What looks like two open ends of an intestine are dangling from Lance’s side, the machine trying to get them to lock up and heal as a single part again. What looks like his liver is starting to reform on the outside of his body, just kind of floating there. There’s a rib floating alongside him that the machine seems to determine as useless for putting back inside of him, but it’s pulling out samples from it to work on recreating bone marrow. It’s an intelligent device that’s copying what it can learn from the injuries themselves. The machine already has a full layout of Lance’s body from the first time he got injured in the explosion, and so it had a very thorough idea of what Lance’s body looked like both inside and out. The explosion ended up being a blessing in disguise really, because the machine took a reading of Lance’s organs and bone structure then, and it was now using that data to help with the healing process. It was hard to tell before, but there are burns all along his arm. The machine fixed the edges of the burn, though there is new skin next to old, blistered skin. The machine can accelerate and artificially modify healing, so the new skin is neat and structured well, though it all looks really delicate.

Back on Earth where Hunk had Lance as a roommate in the Garrison, he knew firsthand how Lance slept. Even now, Lance snores a little when he sleeps. It’s nothing too major, just enough so that he looks a little silly, mouth open and drooling He also tosses and turns in his sleep, kicking off his sheets sometimes and once even falling off the bed. That’s why it was so scary, seeing him looking… so peaceful. His face was relaxed and calm, his lips pressed together. He wasn’t drooling or wearing his usual beauty masks. The machine had at some point decided that he needed an oxygen mask, so there was a see-through cup of plastic over Lance’s nose. Pidge couldn’t really look into the healing pod for more than a few seconds. Hunk could respect that. Keith stared inside, but he looked distant. He didn’t look frustrated, just calculating. Shiro could stare at the pod for longer than pidge, but his eyes started to look completely vacant at the sight of things. Hunk gently taps his shoulder and he seems to snap out of his trance, looking away from the pod. Keith’s words break the silence.

“It was really smart of him to figure out it was a trap,” he manages to say, mostly thinking out loud. Hunk replies without really thinking. “Well, yeah. He’s not a idiot, Keith.” Keith doesn’t look away from the healing chamber, continuing his thought process. “Yeah, but he’s more observant than you would think,” Keith replies. Pidge is the one to add onto that. “Sure, he jokes a lot for a single person, but he isn’t emptyheaded. He probably would have jumped in the way regardless of whether something would have happened or not. He jumped in way too soon to have known. Did the circuit make any noise?” Pidge asks. Hunk shakes his head. “If it did, I would have heard it. I was being cautious too, Pidge. It made the usual noise that electronics make when they start up. No sounds of gears or even the turret moving around. If I thought I heard a gun, I would have reacted around the same time as Lance. It didn’t sound like anything bad was going to happen. I think Lance saw it move before it made a sound.”

Hunk continues. “The panel was part of an abandoned ship. That was the only way for the scanners to have enough power, and if it was a stationary station then they would have destroyed it by now. The Galra would know where it was. It wasn’t a fighter ship, though. The plating I found wasn’t as tough, and it would be way too small of a ship. It had a photon detector for crying out loud, so it needed to be some kind of research lab or reconnaissance ship. I didn’t think it would overload like that on me,” he admits. Pidge nods, thinking over the technical components of it.

“Do you think it could have been a trap?” Keith asks, sincerely. Pidge lets out a hum, thinking it over. “It would be a strange trap. They would have blown up the ship if they knew where it was. It has way too much sensitive equipment. It probably has its own defenses, though. It would make sense that powering the ship’s battery back up would have started them up again,” they think aloud.

Shiro breaks in. “Trap or not, the area probably won’t be safe to investigate after that. If the ship we searched let out any kind of beacon, then there might be Galra already on their way here.

Allura, alarmed by this, finally speaks. “In that case, we will need to move the ship as soon as possible. We don’t need to Galra pinning us down to this location.”

Coran stops her train of thought, his fingers resting on his chin. “Maybe not. It’s been over nine vaga already, and nobody has come to investigate the beacon yet. The Galra would have been here in one or two vaga from when Hunk found the sunken ship. We should probably move the ship, but we should stay in range and monitor the area remotely,” he suggests.

“Alright then. Coran, deploy some drones onto the planets we still need information from, Terrmentha included,” Allura instructs. “In less than half a vaga, I will move the ship out of range so that The Galra cannot find us any longer. When we are able to get everything back in order, I will personally make sure to show them what happens when they hurt a Paladin of Voltron.”

\---

Lance was asleep for two weeks. The silence in the castle was noticeable, only because the paladins kept trying to fill it. Pidge and Hunk were the ones to joke around a bit more. Shiro played along to lighten the mood, but it made Allura seem uncomfortable over their shared meals. They still trained as a team, with Allura stressed and wanting them to focus on working together more than every before. “Not all of you will be able to protect each other at any given moment. You will need to understand how to work in groups of two, and reunite quickly if you are separated. Hunk and Lance are our ranged fighters, while Pidge is middle-ground and Shiro and Keith are close-ranged. Keep this in mind when you’re in a group together,” she instructed on their first day of training without Lance. These sessions ran much longer than when he was awake, from Allura’s stress to the restlessness of the Paladins not being able to work as a team. Shiro seemed to be doing okay the first week Lance was out of commission, oddly enough. The group suspected that it was because he could handle genuine emergency situations very well, while his stress for non-emergency situations sometimes climbed. This past week, Shiro had been doing awful because of his nightmares and was therefore excused from training. Hunk trained for half the time of the others the first week, skipping a day entirely at one point, but was doing better the second. It was like they switched, really. As Lance began to heal, Hunk felt better about their situation. But for Shiro, the realization that Lance was still in bad shape really hit him after about the 8th day. Coran suspects it must have been a nightmare centered around Lance or even the other paladins, though Shiro politely requested that nobody ask him about his nightmares. When he had them, he wanted them over. He didn’t want to take any part in reliving them.

Lance’s skin is all patched up by the end of the second week. After the first five days, Coran made quick work of switching the pod off for a split second so he can switch settings to a mode that uses way more power from the ship. Lance’s healing definitely took a turn for the better after that, which explained why after two weeks he was healing in the cryopods roughly two and a half times faster than he would heal otherwise. Coran figured that it was about time that all of the paladins join together to get an update on Lance’s condition.

Coran calls them down over the loud speaker. Shiro is down first, with Hunk second, followed by Pidge. Keith is a few minutes late, but when he joins in, he’s covered in a layer of sweat from the day’s extra morning training. Shiro hadn’t been in the condition to remind Keith not to exert himself, but Pidge has been on top of that these past few days. They make sure to talk to him in the training deck and get him to stop when enough is enough, taking on the responsibility after they learned from the castle’s information systems that Keith had been fighting on a level just slightly too high for him. They already had one pilot out of commission and Pidge didn’t want to see another family member hurt, especially when they were all like brothers to them. They already lost one and is bordering on two, and they are definitely not letting Keith add himself to that list. Coran was able to talk to them about it on the observation deck later, when they were typing away at a console looking particularly stressed. Coran couldn’t help but ask if there was anything he could do to make them feel a little better. Talking about it seemed to help.

Coran just wishes that he could get Shiro to talk. He’d cut himself off from talking about his nightmares, flashbacks, and other things, and that made Coran worry. While he could understand Shiro not wanting to talk about bad memories, Shiro was also bottling up his reactions and emotions to those things. It was the closing off that had Coran worrying. He had talked to Hunk about getting some extra ingredients for his late night stress-induced cooking, pulled out some older Altean equipment for Pidge to toy with, and even talked with Keith for a good few hours about if there was anything he would like to see added or removed from the ship. He has a lot of good ideas when they’re just coming out from the top of his head, but some of them are a little too alien for Coran to understand. He knows that they’re human, but there were some things that didn’t translate very well between their species. Now, the stressed Paladins and Allura herself were expecting an update on Lance’s situation. Allura stood tall between Coran and the Paladins. Pidge leaned back into a nearby sofa, while Shiro leaned vaguely against the other side with his arms crossed. They’re all standing, looking over at Coran and waiting for him to start. The gorgeous man runs his forefinger and thumb along the edge of his mustache, twiddling with it in the slightest. “Hello, Paladins! Hope you’ve all been well. Here’s the update on Lance’s condition. In another two hours, the machine will be done with what it thinks Lance’s repairs should be. There’s no telling for sure if the machine recreated his organs perfectly, so he’ll be on observation for twelve hours before going back into the healing pod,” the Coranic starts. The paladins watch over him carefuly, observing the way he moves about as he talks. Before anybody can cut in or ask any more questions, Coran continues.

“However, we will be doing something strange to make sure that he’s alright. For the first five vagas, Lance will be on a sedative we call Neuropozyne, or Nu-Poz for short. It’s a drug that is very, very strong but will help Lance’s body adjust to the new organs. They should be fine because they’re made from his own DNA, but we will need to play it safe for now. When he comes out of the pod, he won’t be coherent until it wears off, and that will take a little over five vagas as mentioned previously. It’s been two Spicolian movements and a few quintants on top of that, but if all goes well then there should be nothing to worry about. He won’t be able to talk while he’s on the Nu-Poz, so please keep that in mind. He will need to have the cryopod suit on the entire time, along with a special monitor he will be wearing around his neck to keep track of all of his vitals. If there’s anything even slightly off, I’ll come in to check up on him and make sure everything’s in order,” Coran starts. “It will take a while, but if there are no problems, he’ll be up and about for maybe six or seven vagas before he needs to go back in again,” he adds, shooting a glance over at Pidge. He wanted to make it clear that if Lance does well, they will get a chance to hang around him and talk with him coherently for a while before he’s back in for two more quintants. 

Allura is the first one to speak, phrasing her question as an order as if she already had a plan for absolutely everything that was going to happen. “Lance will need to be with somebody for the entire duration of his time outside of the pod. You Paladins have the option of monitoring him for an hour each until the medication wears off, or you can divide the time in some other form if you wish,” Allura replies. By that, Coran knows that she’s really asking him if Lance will need to be monitored and she’s asking the paladins that if he does, who would like to volunteer. It’s clever, though Coran wishes she would be a little more direct. She might be a princess, but that does not mean that she has to know absolutely everything. Hunk is the one who perks up first. “I want to look over him for as long as I can, if that’s okay,” he volunteers. Pidge and Keith are quiet. Pidge is in desperate need of a nap, and Coran knows this because they’ve been programming hard with no breaks nonstop for the past two weeks. Also, they would likely be upset looking after a comatose Lance. Keith probably would frustrate himself in a similar manner, trying to talk to Lance before he’s fully there or feeling uncomfortable because of how out of character he will seem for a while. Shiro’s already having a hard time with Lance’s injuries without having to look at them, though he also volunteers right after Hunk does.

The humans are alien to Coran. They’re different, in plenty of ways. In how they dressed. The way they reacted to common interstellar goods, as if it was something mystical or freaky. It was interesting to listen to how the humans viewed Altean culture and technology as strange, when it was so easy to see the humans themselves as the strange aliens. There’s a social difference there, too. Small things. Alteans healing in a cryopod would get space from everybody until they were ready to come out, but the humans had a social need to constantly crowd around their healing teammates. To check up on them and be present, even if Lance wouldn’t be awake or see them in any way. Coran knew that logically, it would make no difference if they stayed by the pod or if they were in their rooms. Technology is reliable, and there is nothing the humans can do that would be superior to the custom work of the pods designed to heal aliens from battle damage. 

He sees it specifically now, in the way that Pidge gently moves their fingers along the glass of Lance’s pod. The way Hunk comes close and lingers, as if sharing a closeness with Lance that the healing paladin could feel despite the lack of contact. The way that Shiro couldn’t look into the pod for too long, and yet still lingered beside it, as if the sleeping pilot would somehow know and be offended if he were to leave too soon. Even Keith’s more quiet approach and soft gaze. There was a sense of being together, and despite how alien it might seem to Coran, he has a deep respect for it. As if the paladin’s closeness could manifest physically into something that would somehow make Lance recover just a little quicker. It was that endless determination that had him smiling softly from behind his mustache, leaving quietly from the room so that the Paladins could watch over Lance with their protective gazes. 

They’re defenders of the universe, after all. Even if right now that universe only consists of each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leave a comment if you would like to read more! It's really reassuring to get them ; v ;  
> If you want to message me directly for some reason, my tumblr is forteandbass.tumblr.com
> 
> I moved some stuff around so the chapters would be a bit longer, sorry! It was weird having each chapter be around 3k when they should be around 5k at the least. I thought it seemed kind of weird, so I fixed it up a bit! <3


	3. Information Lost in Transit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance finally wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Just a note, if you got a notification that this fic updated, it did! Chapter 3 was previously another author's note, but the real chapter three is up now. If you are the type of person that tags fics with what chapter you're up to, keep in mind that this fic currently has three chapters. I'm going to try and update again soon!
> 
> Thank you, and enjoy the update!

 

Lance’s pod opens with the usual sound of a space mattress deflating. The lock opening and the chamber tilting slightly, with the blue paladin falling out slowly right into Hunk’s arms. The blue lights shine overhead, dimmed so that they wouldn’t be super blinding to the Blue Paladin when he finally emerges. The other paladins aren’t here for this, a collective decision from them all due to the fact that Lance won’t be coherent for a long while and likely wouldn’t want any of the paladins to see him like that. Coran is by Hunk’s side, however, to make sure that medically everything is going well and to take care of the pod settings and cleaning for when Lance got out. The bottom of the pod is gross and sticky, and Hunk has to look away from the flashes of yellow and red from the bottom of it. Coran steps between Lance and the Pod, as if to spare Hunk from the sight, and gives a gentle nod over to Hunk as he moves to pull a keypad from the wall, a tablet of some sort in his hands.

Lance isn’t that heavy normally, his body muscular and tight for swimming but not much after the long time spent in the pod. At the very least, the pod’s stasis meant he would have lost muscle at a very tiny rate in comparison to how an earth hospital would work. Unlike the first time he ever came out of a pod, Lance is completely unresponsive. He doesn’t move or even twitch when he falls into Hunk’s arms, looking unconscious. The sight alone makes Hunk feel anxious from where he had settled down from earlier, a feeling of wrongness wrapping him up to his core before settling in his chest.

Lance’s skin doesn’t look oily or dry in the slightest, from the machine taking good care of his injuries. There’s no cuts or marks on his face from where he was hurt, which is surprising to Hunk. The Healing Pods are amazingly good with accelerating healing, but it was strange to come out of one without scars when many of the paladins had a few already. Shiro could get hurt and have the healing pod heal the cut without any issues, but it would do nothing to help all of the scar tissue he already has. The pod also will treat the scar tissue as if it’s normal, seeing that Shiro first entered the castle with it. If he gets cut over scar tissue, it will just heal the scar tissue. It won’t leave his skin soft and untouched, like Lance’s skin is, currently. It’s really weird to see, the only indication of a difference being the fact that Lance’s new skin was untanned from space and was a shade or two lighter than the rest of his skin. A minute difference that will go away once he spends enough time on a planet with a stronger sun.  A part of Hunk feels happy about that, knowing that Lance takes his appearance more seriously than the other paladins. He would probably be happy to see that his face doesn’t look any different.

Alien technology can only work so well, however. Any skin healed by the machine probably won’t have working follicles. Or if the hair does grow back, there is a chance of the stress to the skin preventing the hair from having any pigmentation. Much like how Shiro now has a white tuft of hair along the top of his head, from the stress of an impact along his hairline. Lance’s cheek with new skin will have some patches where he won’t be able to grow back any hair. He will probably be grateful about the fact that the top of his head is untouched, but if he had any hopes of actually growing out facial hair, that would suck.

After a good two minutes of anxiously thinking to himself, Lance’s figure in Hunk’s arms, Coran seems to notice and starts to talk. The silence is pretty awkward for the both of them, though Coran doesn’t turn to look at Hunk because he’s busy working on the terminal.

“Lance shouldn’t be responsive for at least a little while. Lay him down in the common area, and I’ll look him over when I’m done with his pod. He should be fine! There’s a band to my left that needs to be put on his neck, and that will check all of his vitals so that if something strange happens, we’ll know about it. Just press it over the side of his neck, where his pulse should be, and if something happens then we’ll know about it immediately.” Coran informs. There’s a soft quality to his voice, Hunk notes. Hunk looks up from Lance to glance at the pod, wondering what Coran is working on. Hunk doesn’t see it when the floor of the pod disappears, along with everything on it, but does see it close up again when it’s completely clean. The pod looks just like the others now, as if it hasn’t been used in a while. The glass is clean on the inside, but would need to be wiped down manually from the outside. He should ask Coran more about how it works later, though he’s already asked Coran enough questions about them the past few weeks that the older man was probably sick of it. Or at least, if he was, he’s too polite to say anything about it to Hunk. He has a copy of the blueprints he’s been looking over to see if he could make another one, a portable one for space travel. It would help a lot, though some of the components are rare or old and need a lot of power.

“Got it, Coran. I’ll make sure he doesn’t move around too much, so don’t worry,” Hunk assures. Coran replies, quickly. “Don’t worry too much about it, Yellow. Lance won’t be able to move much at all for a while, and with the Nu-Poz, he should be just fine. If his neck starts to beep, just take him straight to the pods and I’ll do the rest. You can work on anything you would like as long as Lance isn’t moving around too much, so don’t stress out about it. You’ll need your energy for when he wakes up and wants to know what happened,” Coran states, being careful with his words. Hunk moves to grab the strange neck thing, which looks like a watch with a super tiny band. He kneels down with Lance in his arms, finds the pulse on his neck, and puts the device on him. Much like the handcuffs, the band extends across Lance’s neck and securely holds itself to the skin, not moving at all when Hunk scoops Lance back up in his arms and stands tall. His head rolls back a little, reminding Hunk that his teammate is still completely unconscious. After standing, a hologram appears with Altean writing, displaying vitals in an alien format, and reminding Hunk exactly how different they all were from Coran and Allura. Waving his hand, the hologram disappears from view with a small ‘blip!’. Hunk looks over to Coran, who is still working on the pod.

“I’ll head out now, then. Is everything working?” Hunk asks, a little anxious that he might have put on the strange collar backwards or something. Coran pauses to look over Lance and Hunk, before flashing them both a smile. “Everything seems to be in working order! Not a thing to worry about,” Coran assures, and Hunk smiles thankfully as he leaves the room, his own footsteps echoing behind him as he walks, Lance in his arms.

\---

The last thing Lance can remember is _hot_. Something so blindingly hot that everything in his vision went white, and then absolutely nothing. Not the heat, no color, no thoughts. In the movies or in a show, it would be as if everything faded to black. Only now, there was no black. Only void that felt like something was pulling him from his body, though it wasn’t pulling so much as it was drifting. As if his legs were still legs, but everything from the waist up had become air with no forces acting on it. As if he belonged to another world, at least for a second.

The nothingness lasted for a while. If time was real and not just a construct of human perception, Lance might have even thought that it lasted for roughly 18 minutes. It wasn’t so much that everything paused, as it was that everything just _stopped_. After a while, he started to feel something faint. Hazy. As if clouds started to churn and come into view, restoring his vision along with it. A haze of fog. And suddenly, it started to feel as if he had just woken up, despite the fact that he decidedly was not awake. The feeling of waking up when your mind is fuzzy and everything is soft, knowing you’re a part of the world again but without any real sense of coherent thoughts or logic. Dreams still slowly fading into an ending, that probably won’t be remembered later.

Weightlessness settled back into the familiar mass of his arms and legs. The familiar rise and fall of his chest, only slightly strained now that he was coming to. There was something holding him, a large form that was warm and smelled familiar. His arms and legs felt numb, but he could move them, though he didn’t have the energy to open his eyes or really focus on any of his surroundings. He felt oddly sedated, the ability to think cutting in and making his heartbeat soar.

 _The explosion. Hunk._ Hunk was holding him. _They were probably still in the desert._ He could feel all of his limbs, as if nothing were missing, but he didn’t know if Hunk was okay. _They needed to get him to a pod. They needed to hurry._ All Lance can manage are choking, whimpering sounds that don’t sound quite like words. His tongue feels like a swollen mass in his mouth, as if he can’t talk because somebody had forced a sponge in there. He can breathe, but his own movements feel slow and foreign in comparison to his anxious, racing, thoughts. Hunk is shooshing him, he realizes. Trying to calm him. _But he’s probably hurt and they need to get back to the castle and-_

 Hunk is talking to him, but his hearing sounds fuzzy. Something vaguely hurts about his left ear, as if everything was just a little too loud in comparison to his right one. His right side was what was facing away from the explosion, so it made sense that his left ear must be injured. Lance tries to move, but Hunk’s hand is stroking along his arms, trying to ease him. They’re not moving, and Lance starts to settle when he realizes that Hunk wasn’t in a rush. They must be okay, then. He can’t hear any of the other paladins, but Hunk’s voice is as soothing as it is incoherent. Lance’s heartbeat begins to settle as he eases into the warm figure, groaning softly as If he was waking up and trying to open his eyes. They still felt too heavy to open on his own, eyelids twitching with the effort of it.

He really must be sedated, he realizes. His body was slower than his mind in terms of ‘waking up’. There was a haze over him that felt as if he could go to sleep if he wanted to, muscles relaxed and body limp. Hunk continues to rub at his arm, probably noticing that it helped with keeping Lance calm. Hunk continues to talk, really low and soft. It makes Lance wish that he knew what Hunk was actually saying. They stay like that for a while.

Another careful voice mixes in with Hunk’s after a while. Lance couldn’t put a time on it, but it couldn’t have been really long. Coran’s voice is sharper and a bit more pronounced for Lance, and he’s able to make out words like ‘heart’ ‘fast’ and ‘vitals’. He could feel another pair of familiar hands running along his neck, and he realizes after a moment that there was something actually _on his neck_ to touch in the first place. That brings more attention to his body, which feels almost naked. Almost, as if there was something tight clinging to his skin like a wetsuit. It was either the black of his paladin uniform or a suit from a healing pod. Hearing Coran’s voice means that he either just got off of his lion or just came out of a healing pod, though the way he’s laying down makes him think that he’s either in a pilot’s chair or in a sofa or bed.

Coran’s hand runs over Lance’s forehead as Hunk starts to ask the mustached man some questions. Coran’s fingers touch over Lance’s eyes and the paladin almost winces for a second, though he isn’t sure why. Coran’s other hand lightly touches his arm and shooshes him like Hunk was doing, and he gently holds open one of Lance’s eyes, flashing a light in it before repeating the process with his other eye. He can see Coran and the color of Hunk’s shirt as it happens, but the world is a blurry mess as if he were trying on somebody’s glasses despite having corrected vision. Something kind of sharp is placed on his arm. It feels like a piece of gauze, only sharp like the edge of a knife. The sharpness is vague and doesn’t cut or hurt in the slightest, just feels a little weird as something he has never felt before. Coran rubs it into his arm quickly, and it doesn’t hurt though the sharpness dies down very quickly after a second. His body feels weird after that, as if he were starting to warm up and wake up at the same time.

Lance finally has enough strength to open his eyes, though even the dim lighting of the room is bright and a little bit startling for him. He can see the outline of where him and Pidge tried and failed to set up their video game console, and what looks like a table, and realizes they were in the makeshift living room on the castle. His shoulders ease at that, knowing that he’s safe and that Hunk was probably safe, too. Coran looks a little worried, but smiles widely behind his mustache when Lance moves his hand over his mouth and yawns, rubbing at his eyes only to feel that there was no sand in them. Looking up, he can see Hunk, who appears more nervous than Coran, but glad to see him awake. Lance sits up a little, and Hunk moves a hand to his back to support him.

“Kept you waiting, huh?” Lance jokes, voice soft and light. Hunk honest to god snorts at that, relaxing at the joke that Coran doesn’t get but laughs at anyways.

Coran seems eager to speak. “Welcome back, Lance! You and Hunk found the remains of an old Galra medical ship, though I have some good news and bad news,” he starts. The way he phrases it makes Lance want to try to ask for the good news, first.

“Well, what’s the good news?”

“Pidge and Keith went back and scavenged the remains and found a lot of really helpful information, though Pidge is still working on decrypting some sort of electronic safe that they found. Also, you and Hunk should be doing alright.”

“And the bad news?”

“You may have lost a critical organ or two after the blast.”

Lance winces at that, looking up to Hunk. If he were wearing his normal clothes, he would have lifted up his shirt to see the damage. However, he’s wearing the medical suit, and that was always quite a pain to take off. He isn’t sure what exactly he lost, but Hunk’s grimace tells him that it wasn’t pretty. Lance smiles up at him, apologetically.

“Sorry for making a mess. That’s not the pretty image of me I would have wanted to be remembered by. It sucks that you had to see something like that,” Lance manages, heart sinking a little. Hunk squeezes his hand before talking.

“You saved me, Lance. That’s nothing to apologize for. I should have been more careful. You almost died out there,” Hunk replies, a little bit frantic. Lance cuts off Coran before he can speak.

“Yeah, but I’m here now, right? And Coran said that I’m doing okay. Healing pod probably made me heal like a chameleon or something. And before you tell me anything else, I would do it again. I’m just glad you’re okay. And I won’t be going anywhere on you anytime soon, big guy,” Lance adds, trying to ease Hunk’s worries. Hunk sighs, sweetly, glad to see that his teammate is still the same old Lance, albeit with new organs.

“Lance, are you feeling well enough to have visitors?” Coran asks, calculating his words. Out of all of the paladins, Hunk was the best to be looking over Lance right now. After all, Hunk was the last person that Lance saw during the explosion, and Hunk would be anxious with Lance being drugged up for so long before waking up. Coran would have asked him privately to look over Lance if Allura hadn’t stepped in to ask all the other paladins as well, though Coran is glad that she did, seeing that Hunk stepped forwards anyways. The paladins might be a team, but there was a level of personal pride he understood each of them to have. Lance, of course, has no idea that Coran is thinking any of this.

Lance pauses, thinking it over. He probably looks like hell, though he also feels as if there’s something that Coran and Hunk aren’t telling him just yet. He doesn’t know what the thing on his neck is, or what the patch did to him, and he doesn’t know how long he has been in the healing pod. They didn’t change him into his regular clothes after taking him out of the pod, and surely he wouldn’t have enough time to change into his regular clothes now. At least, not if Coran is asking him to talk to all of the others so soon, rather than asking if he needed food or water. There was something off about all of this, and he’s sure that he won’t like it when he finds out.

“Just give me a minute or two, Coran. So I can stretch my legs and ask Hunk a few things,” Lance requests. Coran nods, excusing himself so that he can fetch the other paladins from where they were working alone or with each other. Allura included, of course. She was the Blue Paladin for a while back, so Lance has always seen her as one of the team. It does suck that Allura had to give Blue back at the end of that long adventure, but Blue seemed happy to get Lance back in her seat. He’d been happy that she had taken him, seeing how he had reacted so poorly back when she first rejected him for Allura. With his current injuries, if Hunk tells him that he can’t pilot  anymore, it wouldn’t be the worst possible scenario for the team. Allura could take over Blue again, if she let her. Like Lance had told Keith before, this is war and not a participation game. They need their best soldiers out on the field. He’s sure they’ve been training without him this whole time, though he’s not so sure Blue would have let Allura pilot for how long he was in the pod. Unless some major fights happened that he doesn’t know about. Which brings him to his first question.

“Hunk, how long have I been in the pods?” Lance asks, voice a little lower than he would have liked.

“A bit over three weeks, buddy. Nothing too crazy, though,” Hunk assures. That was a while for Team Voltron to be without a paladin, but it wasn’t the worst. It would have been a long time without forming Voltron, unless Allura was piloting. A part of Lance hopes that she was, so that he knows that the Universe was a bit safer during the time he was out. A part of Lance also hopes that she didn’t, for the small worry that he was far off physically than Coran was letting on. He remembers the explosion being pretty big. His ear hurts, a bit tingly and raw as if it had reformed. Lance wonders, briefly, where Pidge’s headphones are. They could muffle a bit of the sound and make the slight ringing a bit more bearable for the time being. He doesn’t want to ask Hunk, though, seeing that he would be talking to Pidge soon anyway, and that the big guy would only end up being more anxious.

“What happened to me after the explosion? Anything I need to know about?” Lance asks, voice still soft. He feels as if he talks at his normal volume, his ear will start hurting even more than the discomfort he’s feeling already. Hunk sighs a little.

“Well, I put you in Yellow and we flew back. Shiro helped carry you in, I think. It was all a blur and I felt really sick. I had to be put into a pod, too, so I don’t exactly remember all of the details. I came out of the pod and found out that you really, really did a whole lot of damage to your digestive tract. So, Coran started working a lot on telling the pods how to fix up your organs. You have a bit of a temporary fix thanks to alien bioengineering, but we needed to see if you would reject the organs before you woke up. They have your DNA, so it should be easier on your body, but still. Coran had you on a drug he called nu-poz, to help with that. It kept you sedated and loopy for a few hours, though. I kept watch over you, but Coran also put that collar on you to track your vitals.  By the way, if that thing beeps, you’re going straight in the pod. You’re doing alright for now, though. Am I rambling? I feel like I’m rambling. Lance, I-“

“Okay, okay big guy. Lower your voice a little, please. I got it. I was on alien drugs, I probably have a new stomach or something, and I’m under some sort of medical watch. I get to stay out of the pods now, though, right?”

“That’s another problem, Lance. This is a test run. If it all works out, you go back in the pod, Coran finishes some calibrations, and you come out in a few more days with an alien diet for a while. But if you start feeling sick, then you might need another week or two in the pod, and that would take longer. If you feel even a little bit sicker than you might feel now, let Coran know immediately. Alright?” Hunk requests, his nerves showing in his voice. Lance lets out a long exhale, nodding.

“Alright, tell the others that they can come in now. Just, tell them to keep their voices down. I feel like my eardrum is dancing to Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and it’s really no Bueno,” Lance requests. Hunk flashes him a nod, before leaving the room to go and get the others. Lance takes the time to run his fingers over the brace on his neck, sighing quietly to himself. The smooth, cold metal feels nice on his fingertips, and he realizes suddenly how thirsty he is. He wonders if he would be allowed to drink water, now that he’s awake and all. Unless his alien stomach or whatever decides it doesn’t like that. Better not to take any chances unless Coran gives him the all-clear, though.

The door opens with the normal swoosh, only Lance doesn’t really expect it due to all of the zoning out. It feels like somebody smacked a cloud over his head, heavy on him like the jellyfish that Plaxum put on him. Hell, his face has that same numb feeling to it, too. That is, until Pidge’s voice interrupts his thoughts, reminding him where he is.

“Lance?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a Tumblr just for my Voltron art and stuff at http://askingvoltron.tumblr.com/ so send asks or messages if you have any questions! I love every one of your comments and thoughts. They really keep me going. ♥


	4. Leveling Up, Leveling Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance enjoys some time awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT AUTHOR’S NOTE: Okay, I wrote this before Seasons 3 and 4 came out. So, for the sake of continuity, and the fact that I don’t want to rewrite this right now, the following things have happened for this Fic’s Personal Canon:  
>  Shiro went missing. Allura became the Blue Paladin temporarily. Keith became the black paladin temporarily. Keith did more Blade of Marmora training. Lotor’s rule meant that Voltron was not a main focus, but they still fought against Galra to reclaim planets slaved in the war. Keith got hurt and was unable to perform as paladin for about a week, while the other Paladins discussed who would take over in case of an emergency like this, and Lance was the one who stepped forward saying that it should be Allura. Keith recovered and resumed his position, but the question and situation was left unresolved. Kuron, a clone of Shiro made by Zarkon’s forces, comes back and is reunited with the group. This does not last long, as they receive emergency contact from the real Shiro, who is helping rebel fighters. Kuron is revealed to be a clone, and due to Voltron secrets being leaked, was sent into hiding on an unnamed planet with some rebel fighters to work for the cause. Because there is nothing they can do about his entire body being the definition of a bug, Pidge created a jammer that prevents signals from escaping him and returning to the Galra. However, they still need to be cautious. Kuron dies fighting against the Galra, preventing a plot against Voltron that prince Lotor used him to create in the first place. The team does not handle this well, but the real Shiro is back with them. They returned to their original paladin positions, though Keith still leaves to work with the Blade of Marmora. Blue does not mind being piloted by Lance or Allura, though Red does not like the idea of paladins switching up on her, and will typically only respond to Keith unless an emergency presents itself. 
> 
> All right, now with that out of the way, I’ll mention that Matt is not reunited with Pidge yet. The gaming machine that Lance and Pidge got during the space mall episode has not been fixed yet because Pidge has been working on technology for Voltron based on Kuron’s notes and design. There had been too much going on for them or Hunk to have gotten to smaller projects like that one during this canon. That’s literally only important because in a past chapter, it was mentioned briefly that Lance wished he could play the game again.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, and sorry for the weird canon/AU thing going on here! It made sense at the time!

            Lance is unspeakably glad to see Pidge right now. There’s an ease to having his teammates around, as an assurance that he really was going to be okay. They run over a lot faster than he can process, wrapping their arms around him pretty tight. They’re thankfully small enough where a tight hug does not mean crushing any of his new organs, and the contact with his side is sensitive but not painful. He laughs softly, Pidge holding onto him as if he would spontaneously evaporate if they were to let go.

            “We all really missed you Lance! We were really worried there,” they exclaim. A little too loud to be right next to his ear, but he hides his discomfort with a genuine smile. “Pidge, I hope you know, from my perspective the last time I talked to you was at most an hour ago. What did I miss? You all struggling to go on without my magnificent charm and witty banter?”

            Pidge snorts at that. The exchange brings a smile to Hunk’s face, anxiety momentarily eased. “You wish, Lance. While you were sleeping away for three weeks, I actually managed to get that game console to work. It took lots and lots of power adapters, but it turned out absolutely perfect. Want to play when you feel like you’re done socializing?” they offer. Then, turning to hunk, they add, “There are four players, so you can join too Hunk.” He pauses to think about it for maybe half a second before nodding. Lance remembers how much Hunk likes games and arcades. Though, perhaps cooking mama was more of his thing. It fit him perfectly.

            Lance grins. “Absolutely. Some shakes from Kaltenecker on top of that and you have a deal that nothing in the universe could argue against,” he adds. There’s a lot to do now that he’s awake, though it sucks not knowing exactly for how long. Still, even if he had an hour or two, he could manage doing something fun before he’s inevitably thrown into the pod for another while. His eardrum is still hurting him, though. It seems to thump, like a single heartbeat, with every syllable that Hunk or Pidge say. It feels raw, and while it’s not too horrible of a pain, it feels like poking at a raw nerve. Just wrong and foreign.

            “Hey Pidge, would you mind grabbing me your headphones? I don’t need to listen to music or anything, but everything feels kind of loud and it would probably help.” A little startled by the change in topic, but willing to help her friend, Pidge nods and leaves the room to go and fetch her headphones. Hunk looks concerned again, like Lance figured he would be. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? I could have asked when Coran went to go get them,” he comments. Lance shrugs. “I don’t think that fast, man,” he replies, honestly. “I’m fine, though. On to make this the best week everybody has had in the past month!” he adds, enthusiastic. Hunk sighs, but smiles fondly. It’s good to have his friend back in the world of consciousness.

            Pidge returns maybe 20 seconds later with their headphones, putting them awkwardly on Lance’s head for a laugh. He does, and adjusts them properly. They muddle everything just slightly enough where he can once again just about tolerate a normal speaking volume. As if on cue, Allura walks in with Coran and Shiro. Keith is nowhere to be seen, which is a little startling. Shiro would have gone back and made sure that the red, once black paladin was back for something like this. That means that either something happened, or he was out with the Blade of Marmora doing more training or work with them. Allura is wearing her usual uniform, but Shiro is wearing his paladin uniform. He looks vaguely sweaty, as if he was just training.

            Allura speaks first. “It’s good to see you finally awake, Lance,” she greets. “We are all glad to see that you are doing particularly well. Are we, hmm, interrupting you listening to your device?” she asks genuinely. Lance shakes his head. “It’s not playing any music. I can hear you just fine,” he assures. Coran seems kind of intrigued by the fact that somebody would wear headphones without having anything they intended to be listening to. Shiro doesn’t seem bothered at all, his expression warm. “I’m glad to see you awake and moving around, Lance,” Shiro comments. Hunk nudges his shoulder a little, and Pidge leans into him somewhat from their side on the sofa. It feels good to be missed, Lance thinks. To know that the people around him care for him, and have been waiting for him to come back. It’s what makes his family up in the stars so special, really.

            “I’m glad to be back, Shiro. And to see your beautiful face again, Princess,” Lance flirts. Shiro kind of huffs fondly, from the back of his throat, though slightly off-put but all of the flirting with Allura. Allura seems to either not notice or not be bothered in the slightest, coming over to the sofa to be with the group. Quietly, Lance can hear Coran asking Hunk about the headphones, and Hunk explaining it. They seem to look over stuff on Coran’s tablet, but Lance is more focused on Allura, Shiro, and Pidge.

            “Where did Keith run off to?” Lance asks, vaguely concerned. Shiro opens his mouth to speak, but Pidge cuts him off. “What, you can recognize his mullet anywhere, so you can distinctly notice when it’s not in the room?” they joke. Lance grins wider. “Yeah, it’s pretty obvious. Everybody in this room is way too stylish. We need him to lower the average,” he replies, waggling his eyebrows. Shiro still looks fond, but sighs as if he’s trying to have no part in this. “Now, Lance. Keith is going to be calling in to say hello while he’s on the way back from a mission. The Blade of Marmora had a mission, and he was expected back in time for you to come out of the pod, but there’s been some complications and he hasn’t come back yet,” Shiro explains. Allura cuts in as well, not really understanding the point of why some haircuts were seen as more acceptable than others. “He has been working hard lately. Please take it easy on him, Lance.” Lance nods, accepting the latest information. Above all else, the mission comes first, and Lance has a lot of respect for that despite all of his joking and complaining about haircuts. “It’s all good. Make sure I know when he calls, then,” he adds in.

            Coran taps Lance on the shoulder to grab his attention from the conversation, making Lance suddenly aware that him and Hunk had been having their own conversation behind them. “Lance, your hearing is bothering you, correct?” Coran questions, gently. Lance nods, and he moves his hand, gesturing to the modular device on Lance’s neck. Lance lifts his head a little to expose it, and Coran opens up a hologram screen displaying Lance’s vitals. Pidge is immediately intrigued, looking in closely. Allura steps to the side to give them some space, while Shiro isn’t completely sure of what he should be doing himself. He sits on the curved sofa next to Pidge, who doesn’t budge from where their eyes are glued to the screen.

            Lance can’t really see the screen with his head tilted up, so he kind of just looks awkwardly at the ceiling. It’s not like there’s any better options. Small, furry whiskers move along his leg and almost startle him for a moment, twitching slightly. They climb up to his shoulders, squeaking in his ears and somewhat getting in Coran’s way. He doesn’t seem to mind though, still being able to see the hologram and mess around with what it’s displaying. After a bit, he presses something, and the hologram disappears.

            “I’m going to go fetch a water pouch for Lance. But for the time being, he seems in the clear,” Coran announces. Lance lowers his head and moves his arms up to go and pet the mice who have made their way onto his head and shoulders. Allura seems to have a question on mind, and leaves to go ask Coran something as he leaves to go out into the hall. That leaves the rest of the paladins in the common room, and Lance feels the need to finally stretch out his arms and legs, missing his jacket. He feels naked with just the medical suit on, though he knows that dressing in extra layers might cause a bit of an inconvenience if he were to suddenly pass out or something. With how vague the whole situation feels, he honestly has no idea. It’s still strange to him, knowing that even though he feels a little muggy and fuzzy, that he will need to go back into the healing pod again to finish up the process of his new organs working. He still doesn’t know exactly what was damaged, though that wouldn’t help him know much due to his lack of knowledge on anatomy. He does know, however, that the only thing that prevented him from dying on the spot was the Paladin armor with enough built in technology to know that he had been wounded badly, and to know what to do with that information. There’s more than just padding and fuel for his jetpack, knowing that the damn things have some sense of thermoregulation and composition. He would ask about it later, if he remembers to. It’s just another thing to wander about it if he ever gets particularly bored.

            Lance realizes that he’s zoned out again, with Pidge talking to Shiro about the game system and Hunk chiming in about what he remembers from Earth. Glad that he didn’t miss out on the conversation, Lance feels as if he can contribute to it. “Shiro, come on and join us! There’s no time to waste when the game is pretty much right in front of us,” Lance chimes. At this, Hunk goes up to turn off the lights while Pidge moves the console and generators out front to make sure it’s correctly mounted to the display. Shiro scoots in closer to Lance to fill in the space that Pidge’s absence left there, and Lance can feel Shiro’s sides move silently with his breathing, offering a comfort he didn’t really think about before. It’s just nice.

            ---

            Coran comes in a while with some water, instructing Lance to drink very slowly so that he doesn’t upset his stomach. Lance follows his instructions, but he’s so thirsty that he has to deliberately stop the need to suck the whole thing up like a Capri-sun on a scorching summer day in Cuba. Allura sits down with them and watches them play, asking questions occasionally for one of them to fill in and explain. Shiro is surprisingly better at this than they initially expected, though he plays as a character focusing on healing capabilities. Hunk’s character dies early on and he groans in frustration. Pidge points out that it seems like the worse a person’s cooking skills are, the better they seem to be doing in the game. Shiro, who has burnt most things that he’s made, is amazing and tends to be really lucky. Hunk, who cooks amazingly, seems to be getting really bad luck despite his character being super tanky. Allura takes over for him with a new character, and Lance passes his controller to Coran while he sips away at the water, distracted by everything going on around him. As if doubling in on Pidge’s comment on game ability from earlier, Coran does spectacularly well.

            Hunk had moved in back against Lance, who was now sandwiched between Shiro and his best friend. Pidge leaned on Hunk, practically elbowing him at times, but he didn’t seem to mind. Coran sits right next to Shiro, with a respectable amount of distance, and Allura sat down right next to Coran. It’s just nice, to be surrounded by people all having a really good time.

\---

            A noise chimes in maybe 50 minutes after they started playing, pausing the game for a message stating that an incoming call was coming in. Remembering that Keith was out on a mission, Coran gets up to go and turn on the lights while Allura fixes up her dress, the others not moving from their position on the sofa. Lance is really, really glad that nobody has asked him to get up this entire time. He still feels vaguely groggy, though the feeling is mostly gone. He finished the water during the game, and Coran gave him another to sip away at a little bit after.

            Keith’s face comes in clear, his hood up on his dark Blade of Marmora outfit. Because Lance is sitting so closely to Shiro, he can physically feel it when his shoulders ease at the sight of the raven-haired paladin. He’s safe, Lance realizes. Shiro, as leader, always has to worry about his friends disappearing on him or something bad happening while they are out on a mission. Seeing Keith, safe and sound, with Kolivan in the background, means that they were successful with whatever they have accomplished. He’s safe, and it’s one less thing for Shiro to worry about. Lance had just never really been close or attentive enough to realize it before, he supposes.

            “Uh, hello,” Keith greets from the comm. Kolivan looks over briefly, but seems to be focusing in hard onto something. Shiro is the first to respond.

            “Hello Keith. I see your mission has gone well?”

            “Yeah, we have some code that we want Pidge to take a look at later. We think it’s for a firewall,” Keith summarizes. Quick and to the point, really.

            “Hello, Lance,” he greets, though he seems at a bit of a loss for words. It’s really hard for Lance to place what the other paladin is thinking, sometimes. Keith might seem to not understand social cues sometimes, sure, but Lance felt equally responsible for genuinely not always understanding Keith’s social cues. Keith might like it when things are clear, but Lance likes it when things are obvious, loud, in your face, and fun. The range can be as wide as possible. Sometimes things being concise makes it harder for him to get a grip on. He doesn’t mind having to scope things out.

            “Hey, Keith. Glad that everything is working out,” Lance manages, voice light and loud as usual. He would tease or call him something fun, like Mullet, but he knows that Kolivan can hear them and doesn’t want things to seem that unprofessional around him.

            Allura chimes in next. “Lance is doing well here for the time being. We’ll be waiting for you to come back, Keith. In the meantime, Pidge is demonstrating the human game that they have retrieved during their travels. It’s quite interesting, and allows for four people to play it at once,” she replies, genuinely interested. Altean technology is smooth and relies on trackers or touchpads, so handling a controller with physical buttons is very alien and strange for her and Coran. They seem to adore it, though they were a little confused by the controls in the very beginning.

            Shiro starts to talk, when suddenly Lance feels like there’s a ringing, or buzzing, or maybe both, in his left ear. The damaged ear feels really strange, as if something upset it, and the hearing from it muffles. It’s so abnormal that he doesn’t talk while Pidge, Hunk, Shiro, Allura, and Coran ask Keith some questions about his trip. It’s just idle chatter, after a mission well done, but Lance can’t focus on it at all. His head feels tighter suddenly, like if somebody wrapped a rubber band around his skull and piled on a good thirty of them. Tension. It bothers him, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt. It just feels vaguely uncomfortable. He doesn’t feel queasy or sick though, so he doesn’t want to alert the others now that they’ve finally calmed down and are all having a good time.

            Slowly, the ringing in his ears starts to dissipate while he leans back slightly into the sofa. Hunk had sat up straight to talk to Keith, but Shiro was still leaning against him, so Lance finds himself leaning more into Shiro’s side. Shiro isn’t too bothered by it, at first, but starts to notice when Lance starts putting more of his weight on him. The room feels as if it’s just a little too much. Of everything, really. A little too small. A little too bright. A little too loud. It’s just a little overwhelming, but makes Lance’s chest feel tight. Getting the message that Lance was probably putting so much of his weight on Shiro suddenly for a reason, Shiro eases the phone call into some sort of end. Lance doesn’t speak, but manages to wave a goodbye to Keith right before he shut off the line. Somehow, and with no apparent reason why, Lance feels somewhat stressed.

            Hunk and Pidge have started talking about decoding things in another written language. Lance is able to gather bits and pieces of it, when they pull in Allura and Coran to ask about why universal translators for spoken languages worked so well, but written languages are so difficult. Lance doesn’t catch their answer, head still feeling inexplicably heavy all of a sudden. If he were leaning on Hunk, he would have noticed immediately and said something due to his anxious streak, but Shiro was nudging him lightly to make sure that he was okay. Lance is completely able to talk, but listening in his hard and he still can’t hear from that one ear. It’s slowly fading back in, but it’s really sensitive and he doesn’t like the raw feeling of it. He really, really wants it to be quiet for a good couple of minutes so he can relax and massage his temples with his fingers. Shiro’s hand moves across his back to his shoulder, metal fingers resting on his shoulder and lightly rubbing at his arm. Lance looks over at him, face pale, and Shiro can see that he’s not doing so okay. At least, Lance hopes that he notices.

            “Hunk, Pidge, why not work on this on the bridge with Allura? Keith should be boarding soon, so it would be nice to have decoders open when him and Kollivan show up with the data. They should be here soon enough for you to start running the program,” Shiro states, voice soft. Pidge’s eyes glance over to Lance, noting that he suddenly doesn’t seem so okay, and she nudges Hunk to come with her. Allura starts to speak, but Hunk nudges her shoulder to clear the room for Coran and Lance. Shiro is staying behind to help as best as he can, it seems. The mice are nosy and stay behind, Platt specifically resting on Lance’s head. It’s a little grounding for him to be fair, the light pressure an assurance that he isn’t alone right now.

            Shiro keeps on rubbing up and down Lance’s arm. He asks something, but it escapes him. Lance is still leaning completely into his side, feeling heavy. Coran goes back to checking the thing on his neck, and Lance lets him do so with absolutely no complaints.

            “Lance, are you feeling okay?” Shiro manages, voice still soft. Lance can catch that at the very least now, shaking his head. “Shiro, it feels like somebody smacked me really hard in the back of the head with a sock full of uncooked rice,” Lance replies, so specifically that Shiro has to pause to evaluate the statement for a moment. Coran finds something he doesn’t seem to like, humming to himself.

            “Your new stomach seems to be doing okay for now, but we might need to put you in a little sooner than we thought we would have to. It’s something I didn’t expect to be as big of a problem. Your eardrum popped during the explosion, but that is something the healing pod was quick to fix, and didn’t have any problems. It seems that it might have thrown off your balance and hearing. It will adjust on its own given enough time for your body to adjust to it, but it doesn’t seem to be very pleasant. How are you feeling, my boy? Dizzy? Nauseous?”

            Lance would shake his head, but he does feel somewhat dizzy now, and he doesn’t want to rattle his brain any more than it already is. “It feels… tight? Like somebody is suffocating my head with a jump rope. It wasn’t really a big deal until we turned the lights back on for the call, I think, because it’s bothering me now,” he explains. At this, one of the mice run along to go and shut off the light, allowing for Shiro and Coran to stay in their respective spaces. Lance sighs a little when the lights turn off, the brightness of the room no longer suffocating him. With the other paladins gone, it’s much quieter, and he can actually breathe for a bit. He feels kind of bad, with Shiro and Coran fawning over him and checking him to make sure he’s okay. He doesn’t want to cause them any more trouble. Coran already has a lot of work on his plate, and Shiro has enough to worry about in regards to his own health before he gets too worried about Lance’s. Still, it’s nice. He’s never really had Shiro worry over him like this before, so it’s just kind of foreign for him. Shiro is a lot warmer than he thought he would be, somehow.

            “Lance, did you catch that?” Coran asks. Catch what? He wasn’t paying attention for a second.

            “Sorry, what was that? I’m just tired.”

            “I asked if you were feeling nauseous. If that’s the case, we would need to throw you in immediately,” Coran questions.

            Lance moves as if he’s going to shake his head again, before once again noticing that the gesture would not be pleasant. “I don’t feel nauseous. Just dizzy. I should be fine, right?” Lance asks. Shiro looks genuinely concerned. Not sure what to do other than just stand by and keep close. It’s probably more reassuring than he realizes. Lance is sure of that. He feels a bit more tired than before, even though he just had a large burst of energy while they were playing games together. He moves his own hands up to massage at his temples, but it’s a constant movement and he gives up quickly enough because it just added to the dizziness somehow.

            “Need help?” Shiro offers, unsure of what else to do for his teammate. Sure, he can be a good leader at times, but something like this is small and subtle enough to make him feel a bit lost. There’s a familiarity that he has, namely with Keith, that he doesn’t necessarily have with Lance. They joked around, or at least Lance did, and Shiro would go along with some of them as appropriate. He knows that Lance is capable, but Lance is always very direct about stating his ideas. Keith, who is more closed off, needs more work to talk to in a way that’s natural for him. Lance is very different compared to that, so there is an edge of closeness that they don’t share as much as perhaps Hunk and Pidge.

            “That would be great, actually,” Lance manages. Shiro moves his hands to Lance’s temples and rubs them in small circles. Coran still looking over the screen from the device on Lance’s neck. After a pause, he turns it off and nods, curtly. “Lance should get some peace and quiet for the time being. If the biomedical neck brace makes any noises whatsoever, immediately put him in the open Cryopod. Do that first, before getting my attention or anything else. I’ll know because it’s connected to my personal display,” Coran instructs. Shiro nods.

            After a pause, Lance finds it necessary to comment. “Coran, the neck brace is connected to your tablet, right? Why don’t you look at your tablet to see what’s off instead of checking my neck when you think something might be wrong?” he asks, voice so soft it’s only audible because the room is so quiet. Coran smiles at the question, glad to see that Lance is still attentive to his surroundings.

            “The data comes to my tablet wirelessly from the neck band, but even then there is a small delay between the screens. It’s a very, itty bitty tiny one, but it’s still there. It’s always best to check the source when you can for things that are medical, no matter how advanced. My tablet could have an unforeseen connectivity issue, seeing that the technology is over10000 years old. That’s why,” he replies, genuinely. Shiro takes in the information, as if surprised that such a question would be relevant. Obviously, Coran is doing the best he can for the Paladins of Voltron. If he were in the same situation, he wouldn’t be sure if he would ask those types of questions because he wouldn’t be wondering about something like that.

            Though, that’s why they’re a team, he supposes. Insight from other people can mean so much in the heat of battle. Shiro might be focused, patient, and strong, but he’s aware that his course of action might not always be the best. There is no such thing as a perfect leader, regardless of whether or not it comes as second nature to a person’s personality, or whether it’s clear from a person’s quintessence alone.

            Coran twiddles his mustache. “Well, I’ll leave you here to watch out for Lance, Shiro. Lance, if you feel better, or worse, please be sure to let us know,” he requests, voice fond.

            “Thank you Coran,” Lance replies. The older man collects the mice and leaves quietly, making sure that his footsteps don’t add to Lance’s growing migraine. Shiro keeps on rubbing soft circles into Lance’s temples, and it helps a lot. In the end, he can't help but start to doze off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being 700 words shorter than usual, [I'm trying to go for 5k a chapter] but I hope you guys enjoy it anyways! Sorry it took so long to update. Comments mean the world to me, and I would love to know what you guys think!
> 
> Feel free to message me!! I am ze-zir on tumblr, but the blog I created for this fic specifically is http://askingvoltron.tumblr.com/  
> You can send in asks and I will reply with art. Or you can ask me questions about the fic, or message me about your reactions? I just love interaction. Come talk to me, yo!

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the typos, I don't have a beta. Leave a comment if you want me to continue this, I guess? Aaaaaa or message me on tumblr at askingvoltron.tumblr.com


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